Napoleon and Josephine…

Capt. Jack Aubrey: Do you want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly?

Crew: No!

Capt. Jack Aubrey: Want to call that raggedy-ass Napoleon your king?

Crew: No!

Capt. Jack Aubrey: You want your children to sing the La Marseillaise?

Crew: NO!

From Captain Jack Aubrey’s address to his crew before the final battle: Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World (2003)

He might have been raggedy-ass to Jack and many Englishmen, but for The Little ‘Corsican’ Corporal who rose through the ranks to become the Emperor of France, he was hardly that to Joséphine de Beauharnais, the widow of an executed French nobleman. He was lover, he was husband – he made her his first Empress. Although he was married to another (in order to gain an heir), he locked himself in a room for two days upon learning of her death. On his own deathbed, her name was on his lips when he died.

The following is from the 1987 TV miniseries Napoleon and Josephine – A Love Story and starring Armand Assante as Napoleon, and Jacqueline Bisset as Josephine. The scene depicts Napoleon’s interaction with the Pope; a tender moment between Napoleon and Josephine; and a short recreation of the coronation – the second of December 1804. 

https://youtu.be/J4-hcmBsll0?t=7m20s

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